[ptack]

An element that influences car makers when they have to make various trade offs is the different expectations of their targeted customers. Toyotas are known to be very popular with people who just want a highly reliable appliance that will just get them from A to B. That's a very different group of people than who are looking at 'sports cars'. Mercedes is probably aware that they have some issues, but they may have carefully calculated that reliability for their customers means something different than for other makes and they can afford a certain level of imperfection. The same is true for Porsche and even Tesla in the sense that they really just have to keep people happy with the car which means how well it meets their main expectation (looks, driving qualities, prestige, comfort, etc - not always reliability).
Consumer Reports lives by the same code- know your customer and give them what they want, which for them means reporting reliability and perfomance data to people who want that information before purchasing things. That's clearly not everyone which is why their auto reviews can seem poor to people who have very different expectations about cars.